


Our place

by manubibi



Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cute Kids, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Youkai, can be interpreted as an innocent gay crush between kids or a friendship, fox!Nagisa <3, idc tbh both options are cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 08:19:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13736904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manubibi/pseuds/manubibi
Summary: Sometimes Rei still thought one day he'd stepped in a surreal dream, and never really left.Short story of lonely bby!Rei meeting an equally lonely bby!Nagisa who's also a fox youkai in the woods near Iwatobi and almost immediately becoming friends.Because you too would give a fox boy ear scritches don't lie





	Our place

Sometimes Rei still thought one day he'd stepped in a surreal dream, and never really left.   
It started when he was just a child: in the dimming light of a quiet afternoon in the woods, while reading a book with only the sound of the breeze moving the green leaves above and around him. At some point a soft rustling coming from the thick bushes somewhere near him reached his ears, and his startled eyes just had to look that direction, out of instinct. And right in front of him, hidden a little by one of those plants, he saw another small person - another child, half-crouched not too far from him, with the clear intention of hiding even though, now, he was kind of frozen in place.   
But there was something odd about this child, with a smudged up face and round, rosy cheeks.  
The other child had some evident, big ears on top of his head, perking up through a messy and wild mane of blond curls. Not human ears, but pointy, fluffy ears with black on the tip, ears that reminded him of a fox's ears. And big, round eyes the color of mature cherries, staring at him while a stunned silence settled between them. But the silence broke when Rei dropped the edges of his book on ayakashi and legends, with a soft thump when it fell on the ground in front of him.   
He quickly recovered though, fixing his glasses on his nose and lifting an eyebrow with a scoff.   
"What's a cosplayer doing here in the woods?" He asked, as that was the first explanation that crossed his mind, and picked his book up while trying to find the point he'd stopped reading at. That's why he didn't see the other kid's ears twitching with curiosity, and slowly he emerged from the bush he was trying to hide behind, cautious.   
  
He'd been observing the human child of man for days, but there was no point in pretending he wasn't there, now.  
There weren't many rules, in the woods of Iwatobi, but one of them was absolute: no contact with humans were allowed. It would make everything so complicated, and ayakashi did not need nor want to be involved with those simple, weak creatures that always acted like they owned the land, the life and elements all around them, even though they had no powers, so of course they were not able to see anything else other than themselves.   
However, one thing Nagisa believed was that as long as nobody was around, he could afford to break a rule or two every now and then. And he'd seen the human kid hang around the woods a lot, in the last few months, more and more frequently as of late. He looked lonely. And a bit sad. Nagisa did not like sadness.   
"What's a cosp-uh... _that_?" He asked, and went on his fours to approach the child of man carefully. When Rei lifted his gaze on him again, he was so close he could count each of the freckles on his cheeks, and he gasped wincing, while holding his book in front of his face like it was a shield, and Nagisa squeaked too, taking a little jump back, landing softly on his hands and feet again, quite like a scared cat. But he began giggling right away, sitting back on his heels. "What's that?" He asked again. "The thing you called me."  
Rei blinked heavily, with his lips mouthing a silent 'oh' for a moment, before he eventually cleared his throat and straigtened up with a small blush of shame at having been startled so easily. He was a big boy, after all, that was what his parents would always say, and he inflated his chest while pointing his finger at the furry ears on top of Nagisa's head.   
"Those are fake," he stated, with a knowing look, and then tilted his head. "But I don't read manga. I don't know what character you are."  
Nagisa blinked a few times, making a little, confused noise, and plopped on the ground with his legs crossed as he touched his ears, as if to make sure they were still there.   
"They are not fake!" He protested, and pointed at one of them while he flicked it. "See? They're my ears! And I don't have them like yours," he added, pointing at Rei's, firmly attacked to the sides of his head. But Rei did not catch this part, as his jaw dropped when he saw those fox-like, big ears move like it was natural for them to. But this was clearly a human child! How was that possible? Was there some sort of mechanism to them?   
He just had to investigate, now. He moved closer, crouching, and stared at them while reaching his hand out. Nagisa tensed up, a few tiny voices in his mind whispered at him to run, but it was just a hand. He had a hand too. A hand was not dangerous, so he kept still, but still ready to flee in case the situation was going to turn dangerous.   
But all that came was just a soft touch, and Rin's fingers began moving ever so lightly along the edge of his ear, and a million of soft, pleasant tingles spread from the spots that were being touched so carefully.   
He let out a little pleased growl, moving his head and turning his flappy, soft ears to get scratchies all around.   
Soon enough, despite the screaming voices of disbelief in Rei's head, he had to accept the evidence. Those ears were real. And... he looked at the other child better, realizing that from behind his back there was a wagging tail too! It also looked very soft with its bushy shape, and for a moment he wondered whether he was hallucinating all of it, but without having time to realize so Nagisa was sitting very close, nudging his head to get more pets, silent but with his big eyes playfully demanding more of that unexpected kindness.   
  
"The other youkai don't ever want to play with me," Nagisa complained, as they sat under the same tree Rei was reading under, previously. His lips were pursed in a pout as he wrapped his arms around his knees, and his ears' tips pointed backwards a little. He was treading his fingers through the fur on his tail, taking out specks of dirt and little twigs, but Rei still sort of wondered whether he was dreaming, or maybe he'd eaten something weird for lunch. Because right next to him was sitting a youkai that his book of myths called a kitsune, but _obviously_ he thought all those stories were just make-believe, tales his teacher told his class to dictate some text for a writing exercise.   
"Playing is wasted time anyway," he replied regardless of the thoughts spinning through his head, and tilted his chin up. "It's silly, and childish, and I have no time for that!"   
Nagisa looked at him sideways, lifting his eyebrows while his ears twitched in quiet surprise.   
"But you _are_ a child," he said, tilting his head.   
"I'm more mature than the other kids!" Rei retorted, with his own eyebrows knitting together. "Children are silly. I'm not like them."   
But Nagisa chuckled, leaning his head on his crossed arms.   
"That sounds like something a child would say," he cooed, teasing the other with a finger poking his side. Rei squeaked immediately, and pushed him away a bit too forcefully. Nagisa ended up flopping on his side, and jumped on his feet like he'd just seen a snake slither by.   
"Hey!" He barked, with his ears flat, pointing towards the back of his head.   
He still looked quite harmless though, what with how small he was, and how fluffy and round his form looked. Cute, Rei thought, and despite himself he did not realize he had an apologetic look on his face now, behind the stubborn pout.   
"I'm sorry" he muttered, begrudgingly.   
Nagisa's growl lowered gradually, until his muscles relaxed and his ears perked up again. His tail started swinging gently, and quick enough he dropped on his butt next to Rei again, flashing a smile that Rei could not decypher. It seemed to hide something sinister, but he was not able to pinpoint the reason's why - maybe it was just some stereotype about foxes tricking his mind. But Nagisa seemed to have settled down easily again, and he'd started chattering about the wind through the wood's leaves, about the small stream bringing water like a vein to the trees all around, about youkai gossip and his favorite games to play.   
Rei's mind had stopped screaming a while ago about the scientific impossibility of everything happening around him, about how illogical the mere actual existence of youkai was, in favor of observing the way the kitsune moved, about how he seemed to act more a dog rather than a fox, so in his mind he was thinking maybe the tales did not account for a variety of personalities among the same type of youkai, and only when his thoughts were way deeper than he'd ever expected into theories and conjectures, did he realize he was thinking logically about something that defied every logic he'd ever learnt to follow.   
He looked at Nagisa with stunned eyes when the fact he was casually chatting with a kitsune truly hit him, and he blinked like he'd seen him for the first time, again.   
"So... you're really a kitsune?" He asked, interrupting some exaggerated tale about how once Nagisa had scared the entire region with a really ill-timed howl, and got a surprised look back.  
"Yes... I'm a fox," Nagisa peeped, with a confused frown and his head tilting. "Usually the people who see me just yell at me to go away, none of you humans ever talked to me until now."  
Rei could hear the evident notes of sadness in his voice, but he pressed on anyway, too curious now to stop.   
"So... you're not a trickster kind of youkai?" Rei asked, editing his mental notes on kitsune.   
"Some others like me are, but they also don't care about being lonely," Nagisa explained, with a little stretched out smile.   
Okay, so maybe he was a benevolent kind of kitsune. Or, in the worst case, a neutral one. He'd always heard kitsune got their fun from playing pranks on unsuspecting people, or even from harming them, so his thoughts on different personalities were still valid in his notes.   
However all of his thinking faded when he saw the look on Nagisa's face - he really did look like a creature that had been spending a lot of time trying to have some company from someone. He remembered what Nagisa said, about the other ayakashi pushing him away, and humans being scared of him, and his chest clenched a little at that thought.   
He hadn't lived much, but he knew he was not exactly the best at comforting other people. Whenever he saw someone being sad, his first thought would be thinking of something logical to say, but what could sound rational to a creature whose nature blatantly ignored every notion of rationality Rei knew?   
"You don't have to be lonely," he blurted out, "I live close by. I could come play with you."  
He blinked at his own words and looked away with a small blush coloring his cheeks, and fixed his glasses on his nose trying to mask his embarrassment, but immediately Nagisa tackled him to the ground and he yelped, with his eyes wide and startled behind the glasses crooked on his face, and with all his muscles frozen with surprise again.   
But when he saw Nagisa's head pressed against his chest, when he felt small arms around his waist and the soft bushy tail wagging happily in the air, he relaxed right away.   
"Rei-chan, so that means you're my friend!" Nagisa cheered with his voice sharp and bubbly, and then he looked up at Rei with the biggest, shiniest smile the boy had ever seen on anyone's face.   
 _Beautiful_ was the only word that popped in his mind, but as a more intense blush expanded on his face he pushed it away, and sat straight up again taking his glasses off to clean them.   
"Yes, I... I guess so," he replied, balancing them on his nose again. "Or, well, I suppose we could be friends. I definitely think you're very interesting, although... I don't think if I ever told other people about you they'd ever believe me."  
Nagisa blinked, and shook his head furiously, so hard that his ears ended up flapping this way and that.   
"Oh, no no no! Don't tell other humans! Humans and youkai aren't supposed to interact," Nagisa said, with lines of worry on his face. "But... I still want to be your friend. You're funny!" He added, sporting a smile right after, and a giggle.  
Rei pouted at that, not knowing exactly how to take it.   
"Don't make fun of me," he grumbled, but Nagisa leaned his head against his shoulder.   
"Ah, I'm not! I'm saying... you're fun to be around."   
Rei blinked and his face turned pink (again) at those words. 'Fun' was not exactly a word people used often to talk about him. The opposite was more frequent in their vocabulary, in his case.   
He looked away, trying to hide the pink on his face, and ignoring the giggle coming from his side, he noticed the sky was turning dark. It was getting late, and he had a very early curfew - he was supposed to be studying, now.   
"Well... I have to go home," he said, and surprised himself in discovering he was not really feeling like it. Spending time with a wood's youkai sounded a lot more interesting and fun than most other activities he'd been putting himself through, but on the other hand, he already knew full well that he did not belong here.   
"Oh..." Nagisa's voice came to him soft and without the ring from before, and when he looked down at him he saw his ears pointing towards the ground, with his head hanging low.   
"I'll be back tomorrow, though!" Rei continued, grabbing his book and listening to his heart race at something else he did not think he would have said. But it worked. Nagisa's head tilted up quickly and his eyes glittered with excitement as he jumped up with his tail swishing left and right again, and his tiny hands grabbed Rei's.   
"Really? You'll come play with me again?"   
Rei thought even he could hear the fox's tiny heart thump in his chest, and a bubble of something warm burst in his chest. Finally, his lips curled in a smile and he nodded, vaguely registering his hands being held by Nagisa's. He only realized it when they were let go, and his fingers tingled, so he started fidgeting with them for no apparent reason.   
"I will," he promised, and was about to turn around when Nagisa called out to him again.  
"Wait, Rei-chan!" He yipped. "Scratchies!" And he pushed his head against Rei's chest, flicking his ears a few times.  
 _Beautiful, and adorable_.   
His brain really needed to shut up; those thoughts were very silly for him. Still, he accepted to scratch around Nagisa's ears, and more bubbles popped in his chest when Nagisa let out a few more sounds like purrs and happy trills, and when Rei eventually stopped scratching he whined a little, but stood where he was looking at his new friend take the path to leave the woods.   
"I'll wait for you!" He called, with his big bushy tail still waving left and right, and Rei looked over his shoulder waving at him until he disappeared from sight.   
He was still not completely sure what he'd seen earlier was real, part of his mind just grumbled that it could not be, it was not possible, and it had definitely been a dream he'd had after dozing off under the tree's shade.   
Well, tomorrow he would figure it out. And the next day, the fox was there, sitting under their tree, and began running in circles and squeaking with excitement with his tail making grand swishes in the air, then grabbed Rei's hand.  
"Come! I'll show you the stream," he chirped. Rei still did not know about that odd kid's intentions, but this time he let himself be dragged away, but this time his skeptic mind was silent. He just let himself get dragged away, with a tiny smile playing on his lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> If this sounds like I got a lot of stuff from Natsume Yuujinchou-- it's precisely because I did. It's just so *clenches fist* FREAKIN CUTE. So of course since whenever I see anything cute chances are high that i'll immediately shove reigisa in it, you know, that's what I did.   
> Like, imagine bby!Nagisa in the first episode of Free! _but_ with big floofy fox ears and a big floofy fox tail. UR WELCOME.


End file.
